Requiem for Brock*

Badgers have been much on my mind today. It started with an early morning radio item about the cull of badgers that the Government is conducting in the South West of England in an attempt to reduce the incidence of bovine tuberculosis in cattle. The cull involves killing 70% of the badgers in two areas. Those doing the shooting have been told the numbers to be killed in order to achieve a 70% cull. The only problem, it seems, is that the population estimate is so poor that the number to be killed might well be greater than the number of badgers actually living in the area! So, a 70% cull might well end up being total eradication in the area. I turned off the radio confused and depressed.

Things badger-wise improved as the morning went on. Last night we had set a camera trap in a friend's wildlife garden. When we downloaded the videos we were delighted to see that we had captured a badger happily snapping up earthworms among the trees. We had no idea that badgers used the area. Joy unbounded!

Then, in the afternoon, things went downhill again when I discovered a large badger boar lying dead at the side of the road, a traffic casualty. As you can see from my blip nature's recyclers were already at work in the form of iridescent green flies laying their eggs on poor old Brock. The maggots and carrion crows will make short work of him. You may need to get up close to see the rather attractive flies.


* Brock is an ancient English name for the badger. It is probably derived from a Greek word meaning grey.